Dream Catcher Stories

Together with the whole world, I was also affected by the Valentine craze. It started on the Sunday of the week of Valentine's Day when I started making cookie dough. I made two batches of cut-out cookies in heart, teddy bear and butterfly shapes. It was a hectic week in school so I decided to split the jobs of making the dough, baking and icing the cookies into four days (the last bit of icing was done on the night of the 14th - I gave the cookies the next day to my high school BFFs).

If Sen. Miriam Defensor-Santiago said that the 14th may be viewed by people in three ways - Vday for people in a relationship, Single Awareness Day for those who are single, and for people who couldn't care less, it's just Thursday - I decided to add one more option: Make as many People Smile Day.

Being single, it may be expected that I spend the day sulking and asking my self why is it that I'm spending the day for couples without a partner AGAIN! But I think this isn't proper. Instead of having a boyfriend as my valentine, I decided to have lots of people as valentines.

I started with my college friends. I packaged a teddy bear cookie and a butterfly cookie in cute little packets and gave each person a bag. I was supposed to give some of my other friends cookies, but we didn't have a chance to meet up. So I got into the car with three bags remaining. One was for the old lady who sells sapmaguita leis we always pass by the bridge on the way home, the others were just extra. But when my sister and I made a detour to buy a cake for my mom (it was her birthday), we passed by a lady by the street selling dried fish and squid. She looked really tired being under the scorching sun for who knows how long, so I made a spur-of-the-moment decision to give one of the extra cookies to her. When we got to the mall, I gave the last cookie to the elevator lady who my family already consider as a friend. The cute drawings on the cookies made my friends and both strangers smile like little kids who woke up on Christmas Day with gifts from Santa in their stockings, and this was more than enough to make nights of mixing, kneading, rolling, cutting and icing worthwhile

The next day, I went on a date with my high school friends and gave them the remaining cookies I had at home. We only get to see each other every few months since we entered college, so we treasure moment we get to spend with each other. I spent my post-Valentine date with three people who are very close to my heart, which I think is what's important. We talked, laughed and ate like it was the end of the world. When I got home, I too slept with a smile on my face. This, I think, is the best way to end my Valentine Day experience.

J<3

To my 4B family, I love you guys with all my heart. I really, really miss you. I hope we can all set some time off our busy schedules and see each other again. I miss you, and I hope to see you ALL soon. >:D<  :*

Oh the joys of being a teenager - being in high school, hanging out with your BFFs, going to parties, being carefree and living life to the fullest, and the best of all, having SLEEPOVERS!

I was 15 when I first experienced my first sleepover, although it wasn't really a sleepover 'cause the sleepover happened in our house. Since then, I've only experienced one real sleepover because most sleepovers we have that I get to go to are held at home.

Although this was the case, I always have a blast in all my sleepovers. In a stereotypical slumber party, you would imagine teenage girls in their jammies, playing board games, giggling over boys and painting each other's nails. To tell you the truth, this isn't really what we do (although we may do some of those sometimes, i.e. giggling over boys and being in our jammies).

But really, is this all we do? Nope! We do tons of other stuff. Take my recent sleepover for example. My high school friends and I decided to have a sleepover at our house, and at first we DID have a little "guy-talk". But afterwards, we had other things in mind. We watched a movie, chatted even more, took photos, sang, played some instruments, more chatting, watched videos, tweeted (a lot), slept (DUH!), exercised (something unusual, but we still did it), cooked, defrosted our fridge (unintentional and tiring, but fun) and teased each other along the way.

And in each sleepover we have, we get to learn something new about ourselves. During lunch, we realized how mature we already are. In high school, we used to talk about silly things like scary movies, jokes, funny stories and other stuff. We still talk about these other times, but we were surprised when we found ourselves talking about politics. We may be incoming college juniors, but we still feel like the high school girls we once were. That's why we end up a little stunned when we find things which makes us more adult than kids. We do realize that more than half of our group are already considered adults by the society for being 18 years old. And the rest of us are turning 18 ourselves in a few months, so maybe age-wise we are kind of mature.

At the beginning of writing this blog, I thought I was doing this because I wanted to write about what really happens in sleepovers. But as I went along, I think what I wanted to write more about is how I miss spending time with my high school friends. Being with them made me miss high school a whole lot and it made me realize how much I don't want to be an adult yet because I don't believe I am ready. I don't know how to face life as an adult because I've been so used to being a kid that I'm gonna miss being one. But actually I think no matter what we are doing - whether it's having a sleepover or growing up, what makes it fun and enjoyable is not what we do, but who we were with.

Lots of Love,

J<3